Skip to main content
Dessert

Spice Nuts

A baked mixture of molasses, butter, ginger, sugar, spices, and flour, dropped onto pans and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spice Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix molasses, butter, ginger, sugar, baking soda, cayenne pepper, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Add flour gradually until the batter is stiff enough to drop from a spoon.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto buttered baking pans.

  4. Bake until golden brown. Allow to cool before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark color, sweetness and a rich, moist body to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, helping the spoonfuls spread and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that turns the mixture into a stiff batter that holds its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift the batter and help it spread and brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown during baking.

The step that matters

Add the flour gradually. The batter must be stiff enough to drop from a spoon. Adding flour a little at a time lets you judge the consistency, since too much flour makes the spoonfuls dense and dry while too little lets them spread too much.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, butter, sugar, pepper, allspice, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, sugar, pepper, allspice, cinnamon, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes